Melodies on Hiatus Albert Hammond Jr.

• 1100-99 (feat. GoldLink)03:36
• 2Downtown Fred04:25
• 3Old Man03:33
• 4Darlin'03:52
• 5Thoughtful Distress (feat. Matt Helders & Steve Stevens)03:40
• 6Libertude03:55
• 7Memo of Hate03:25
• 8Home Again03:43
• 9I Got You03:26
• 10Caught by Night03:52
• 11Dead Air03:15
• 12One Chance03:47
• 13Remember (feat. Rainsford)00:29
• 1481803:56
• 15Fast Kitten04:12
• 16I'd Never Leave03:17
• 17Never Stop03:16
• 18False Alarm04:00
• 19Alright Tomorrow (feat. Rainsford)03:54
• Total Runtime01:07:33

Info for Melodies on Hiatus

Pop/rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. is the lead and rhythm guitarist and songwriting member of the GRAMMY® and BRIT Awards-winning band The Strokes. He has released 4 solo albums to date, most recently the acclaimed “Francis Trouble” in 2018 which spawned the radio single “Far Away Truths”. In the 4 years, since then, The Strokes released their US Top 10 charting GRAMMY® nominated rock record “The New Abnormal” and toured the world extensively.

The nineteen-track double record is a long listen by today’s standards - standards which encourage one-minute-thirty-second, double-hook double-chorus, TikTok-able garbage - but an enjoyable, nuanced, and fragrant one that doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is, which is to say, a good time. Featuring collaborations with GoldLink, Matt Helders, and Rainsford, to name a few, Melodies is an expansive, and developed multi-genre collection by an artist willing to spruce up, cut down, and build out in whichever direction the song takes them.

As a whole, when compared to previous albums, Melodies On Hiatus is more spacious, and, strengthened by or perhaps even made even possible through a lyrical collaboration with Simon Wilcox, draws from a deeper emotional well, although I do believe that even if Albert had abandoned linguistic reasoning all together - if he had taken a note from Sigur Ros’ heartwarmingly nonsensical Hopelandic and had chosen to develop a dialect all his own, the album’s layering, patience, and strength of melody - particularly on stand out tracks like ‘Caught by Night’ and ‘One Chance’ - would be enough to hit, to feel, and for the song’s emotional fingertips to graze your own.

On the note of emotional fingertips grazing one’s own, Melodies On Hiatus flirts. It knows what it is and what it has to offer, and can accommodate you at any given mood with a confidence that one can’t help but find simultaneously elusive and alluring, and as we claim in our next print issue, it is an album to make friends to, to have sex to, or maybe both. It is for listening, but also for living. The double album floats but doesn’t mope, with moments of excitement and complexity that accent and balance the minutes of moodiness and tranquility.

We recommend hitting play on the album embedded below before proceeding. By my best guess, I don’t think we’ve spoken to Albert since last Splendour in the Grass, so about a year ago.

Albert Hammond Jr.

Albert Hammond Jr.
Best known as the Strokes’ rhythm (and occasional lead) guitarist, Albert Hammond, Jr.’s solo career took his music in more eclectic, and more personal, directions. The son of singer/songwriter Albert Hammond, whose hits include “It Never Rains in Southern California,” “When I Need You,” and “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” Hammond was born in Los Angeles. He went to the prestigious Swiss boarding school Le Institut le Rosey as a teenager, where he met future Strokes singer Julian Casablancas. When Hammond moved to New York City to attend New York University’s film school in the late ’90s, he reconnected with Casablancas, and the Strokes were born. While Casablancas is the band’s chief songwriter, Hammond co-wrote Room on Fire’s “Automatic Stop” and also wrote songs that appeared on the Strokes’ 2001 tour video, In Transit.

Hammond revamped and renamed these tracks and included them on his solo debut album, Yours to Keep, which featured bassist Josh Lattanzi and drummer Matt Romano as his main support. A host of indie celebrities, including Casablancas, Sean Lennon, Ben Kweller, Fountains of Wayne’s Jody Porter, and the Strokes’ manager, Ryan Gentles, also appeared on the album, which was released on Rough Trade in fall 2006 in the U.K. and early in 2007 on New Line in the U.S. Bassist Marc Philippe Eskenazi joined Hammond’s band for 2008’s sprawling ¿Como Te Llama?, which was released worldwide that summer.

A 2009 stint in rehab and the Strokes’ reunion — which produced two albums, 2011’s Angles and 2013’s Comedown Machine — meant that it took a few years before Hammond returned to his solo career. The 2013 EP AHJ featured some of his most focused singing and songwriting, and was released by Casablancas’ Cult Records label. The following year, Hammond began working on his third solo album. He reunited with Strokes collaborator Gus Oberg as well as his backing band — guitarists Mikey Hart and Hammarsing Kharhmar, bassist Jordan Brooks, and drummer Jeremy Gustin — for Momentary Masters, which arrived in July 2015. The following year, Hammond joined forces with the Strokes once again for the Future Present Past EP. In 2017, he contributed a version of Vera Lynn’s “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot” that interpolated the chorus of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” to Amazon’s Indie for the Holidays series. For his fourth album, he reunited with Oberg, taking inspiration from his stillborn twin to create the songs about loss and identity that made up 2018’s Francis Trouble.

This album contains no booklet.